So, here’s the thing: I don’t tolerate standing in line very well. In my experience, there just aren’t that many things that are worth spending very much time standing around doing nothing else. Patience is certainly a virtue I’ve tried to cultivate but with mixed results. As long as Patience has got an arbor or trellis to climb on – another task I can be DOING while I’m being patient about the original – it can…to a certain extent…if not flourish, at least bear some fruit. Stunted, tiny...no, actually if I may hang up my misanthropic self-flagellating cloak for a few seconds, even I will have to admit that sometimes the fruit was worth cultivating. Although I don't know how you people do it all of the time. This patience thing is EXHAUSTING.

A club I’d have to stand in line for? Look, already you’ve told me that it’s CROWDED in there. That comes with a whole package of fringe benefits I don’t want any part of: loud, olfactorally offensive, hard to get a drink, hard to hold a drink without some yobbo jostling me and spilling it, and a probable shortage of toilet paper. So, no.

Tickets for a concert/movie premiere/whatever? Once I got out of college and no longer had a friends with benefits relationship with the guy who booked those things…ha, oh, I’m only joking. We were just friends….it was just a favor…um…look, don’t judge me. The tickets were an UNEXPECTED benefit. But seriously, on my own – stand in line, camp out, what? I’ll wait. I don’t feel the need to see anything RIGHT AWAY, if I have to inconvenience myself for it. And there’s no act that I can’t wait until they’re less popular and can just get tickets at my leisure. Because once again, like a club, really popular probably means all sorts of jostling and crowding and the only thing worse than waiting in line to get tickets would be waiting in line to use the bathroom.

Checkout Stands? I will go to the self-checkout and do all of the work myself, getting out of the store no quicker than I would have, I had waited in line at the checkstand. Just to be DOING something. Unless of course, I haven’t had a chance to check out this month’s Star, in which case I will while away the time with trash.

Restaurants? Well, okay. Having just stood in line in the freezing cold for about 30 minutes waiting to get into a pizza joint, I have to bow to this one. But it had better be good. Really good. Or otherwise be some kind of iconic food experience. In this case, the company was grand, and it was Sally’s Apizza on Wooster Street in New Haven. And if you were not instantly jealous, well, then you’ve clearly never HAD serious pizza. In a serious pizza joint. (I still get a frisson remembering the big guy in the less than spotless white t-shirt, holding his little piece of paper and pencil stub, asking “You guys want mutz on that pie?” )

My relationship with food constitutes so much more than simply what goes in my mouth. Are there better pizzas? Possibly. But if you’re not sitting at a crappy linoleum table, surrounded by the ubiquitous red and white pizza boxes, surrounded by people who understand that pizza is pronounced abeets…it’s just food.

But sometimes I’ll endure a line because there’s simply no other way to get what I want. In this case, in order to fully enjoy a Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey Burlesque show, hosted by Dr. Doughnut, you really have to be on the mezzanine, especially if you’re going to avoid all of my issues with crowding and smells and…PEOPLE. And THAT my friends is worth getting in a line, so that when the doors open, you can zip upstairs and claim a spot.

But, of course, I’m stuck in line. With nothing else to do. I thought about bringing my kindle or even a regular book, but this is the type of event you make sure you wear a WASHABLE coat to. I mean, the club is skeezy in the finest of Baltimore skeeze and really like a pizza on a crappy linoleum table, this is how Burlesque was meant to be experienced, but you don’t want to bring anything that can’t survive being stepped on, doused with beer or knocked off the mezzanine.

So there I was, bored. With only my fellow human beings, all strangers, in line to amuse me. So, I stand there, with my inscrutable little smile…not because I’m channeling the Mona Lisa, but because the women in my family are prone to puppetmouth as they age, those deep lines that run down from their nose to the corner of their lips, that are exacerbated by smoking and frowning. And since we’re also prone to frowning, I’ve worked very hard to cultivate a slight smile when at rest.

I know. You thought I was just a pleasant person, casting a faint glow of benevolence and kindness onto my fellow men. Screw that, I’m working on my wrinkles. Oh, and seething, just seething at the general arrogance, stupidity, uselessness and overall vacuity of whoever’s droning, pedantic self-absorbed voice has penetrated my personal space buffers.

In case you were wondering where the Vulva-Vagina post of yesterday came from…..

My iPhone has probably stood between me and a disorderly conduct charge more than once, for exactly this reason. It will keep me more absorbed than an infant staring at Christmas lights, and I can put it in an inside jacket pocket when humanity presses too close.